BNL Grants Emeritus Status to Retiree Keith Jones

At the x-ray microprobe on beamline X26 at the National Synchrotron Light Source in 1989, Keith Jones (front, left) is among researchers from Brookhaven and the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City examining the results of a study to determine the amount of gallium nitrate accumulation in the bones of a cancer patient.

Keith Jones, who after a long and varied career at Brookhaven retired from the Environmental Sciences Department on January 13, 2012, has been named Senior Scientist Emeritus. He first came to the Lab as a summer student from Princeton University during the summers of 1949 and 1950. Then, with a 1955 Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin followed by work at the University of North Carolina, Columbia University, and Ohio State University, he joined the Physics Department on July 23, 1963.

On September 28, 2012, then-BNL Director Sam Aronson wrote to congratulate Jones and cited some of the highlights of his contributions:

"You have been a productive member of the scientific staff at Brookhaven for nearly 50 years. during which time you have made significant contributions to atomic physics and to the development of materials characterization methods based upon the use of x-ray beams from the National Synchrotron Light Source [NSLS]. These analytical techniques have been effectively used in many fields including materials science, chemistry, environmental and biomedical science, and education.

You have published more than 300 papers in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, authored or coauthored over 40 book chapters, and given innumerable technical talks at government laboratories, universities, and at scientific meetings both here and abroad. You have served as Division Head and Group Leader at the Laboratory, have held the position of Adjunct Professor at both Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Stony Brook University, and have been a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 1966. By any standard, your scientific career has been exceptional.

Your continued engagement and reputation as a creative research scientist and your continued work in advancing the use of NSLS and NSLS-II x-ray beamlines for a variety of scientific studies will be greatly valued."

Said Jones: "I have been very fortunate to work at BNL in a period covering its very early beginnings to its present status as a great research institution. During that time, I was part of groups working in different ways on the Cosmotron, 3.5-MV Van de Graaff, double Tandem Van de Graaff , National Synchrotron Light Source, and now, in a small way, on implementation of work at NSLS-II. It was also a privilege to have been associated with people such as the Goldhabers, Sumyar, Schwarzschild, Warburton, Chasman, and of course many more as time went on. I liked doing different types of experiments as exemplified by a study on bone formation using x-ray microbeams at NSLS beam line X26A (see photo) and doing projects that merged science with field-scale work such as a sediment decontamination demonstration involving the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the New Jersey Department of Transportation, and private sector companies, as well as other projects with citizen environmental groups.

"In the future, I hope to continue developing experiments for NSLS-II and maybe even do an experiment there. Also, I'll be working on Long Island environmental studies with our Office of Educational Programs, schools, and other groups to try to contribute to a better understanding of our local ecosystem."

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Brookhaven National Laboratory

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